Reflections on Mere Christianity

            Mere Christianity is the best-known apologetic work by Anglo-Irish author Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963).  It was based on a series of radio lectures Lewis did for the British Broadcasting Company during World War II.  Lewis was the ideal choice for the program on religion.  He had spent time as an atheist, he was a layman, and he was an academic.  Seeking to provide a broad defense of the Christian faith, Lewis consulted clergymen from several denominations in preparing his manuscript.[1]  Doing so allowed him to make as broad an appeal as possible.  He was trying to explain what beliefs united all Christians to a hostile or curious world.  He was searching for the basic tenets of the faith—mere Christianity.

            Lewis begins by exploring the moral law of the universe.  The existence of good and evil are proven by ubiquity; there really isn’t anyone in creation who denies right and wrong.  He calls this a natural law.  Natural law is different from the laws of nature in science; those laws are universally followed.  The moral law, however, is simply the law of how men ought to behave, not necessarily how they do behave.  In other words, moral law is the only thing in nature which can’t be established by naked observation.  It’s the only law which can be broken.  “The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave.”[2]

            I believe that this is the strongest basis upon which to start talking about God.  Human indignation about the actions of others makes no sense in any other framework.  We are reviled by evil.  We behold what we perceive to be injustice—especially injustice against ourselves—and we react with outrage.  There is no reason why we should act as if something so metaphysical as justice existed unless there really was something behind it.  “Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple.  If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.”[3]

            I was left with more nuanced thoughts in book two chapter 3, “The Shocking Alternative.”  Here Lewis gives the free will defense of evil.  If God is all-good and all-powerful, how can evil exist?  Lewis replies by saying that man has been given free will.  God created beings with the ability to accept or to reject evil.  By creating beings with the ability to choose freely, he also created the possibility of evil.  Love is not truly love, Lewis says, if it is forced.[4]  This defense is difficult to fit into traditional Reformed thinking.  After all, isn’t the real answer to the problem of evil God’s sovereign rule over the earth?  Isn’t evil a thing he uses, without being guilty of it, to bring about his plan?  A lost friend I have once said that the free will defense didn’t offer much solace to him.  He wasn’t sure that free will was worth the agony and abundance of suffering in the world.  Maybe it would be better if people didn’t have freedom or love at all.  For Lewis, God’s telling us free will is worth it means it must be.[5]  That isn’t true for my friend.

            I think the free will defense is adequate to explain the origins of evil.  I am not sure it explains the persistence of evil.  After all, sin had entered the world.  Evil existed.  God could have send Christ at the moment he sent Adam and Eve out of the garden and accomplished the salvation of humanity at that moment.  Unlike some Reformed thinkers, I am uncomfortable dwelling too frequently or deeply on God’s purposes in evil.  I would rather explain evil—especially to those in the midst of suffering—as something which had to exist because Adam had free will and because God intended to reveal himself as redeemer.  Because of the Fall, we know God as redeemer; this greater knowledge of God is somehow worth it.  Like Elihu in Job, man may never know why God allows evil to persist.  What we do know is that he made sin possible, can’t be held guilty of committing it, and will triumph over it.

            Book three chapter 5, “Sexual Morality”, makes an interesting point in relation to sexual ethics.  Lewis notes that many sexual liberationists believe that the sexual drive is a natural appetite just like hunger, thirst, or fatigue.  Lewis disagrees, claiming that the sexual appetite goes beyond its intended purpose.  He believes that this is good evidence for the continuing effects of the Fall.  He uses another humorous example: “Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?”[6]  Why then, Lewis asks, do we not think something quite wrong with our sexuality?  And would not a foreign observer think something was wrong with our view of sexuality?

            Most people in Lewis’s day (and ours) thought that this was a reaction to sexual starvation in the country.  That hypothesis would be bolstered if people really were sexually repressed.  In reality, we see more sexuality than ever in culture, society, and individual lives.  Lewis is right that sexuality is not like our other appetites, just as the Bible distinguishes sexual sin as distinct from others.[7]  Something really is different about sex.  When taken out of its context, it perverts and distorts all things to its consumption.  Like greed it uses people to satisfy a desire.  Unlike greed, lust is internal rather than external and causes one to sin against his own body.

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[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper-Collins, 2001), xi.

[2] Ibid., 20.

[3] Ibid., 39.

[4] Ibid., 48.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 96.

[7] 1 Cor. 6:18.

A Hill To Die On

Napoleon's Russia Campaign was over months before he left a limb-littered red trail in the Muscovite winter.  While the popular anecdote tells us that the Tsar's climate bested France, the truth is that imperial troops had overextended their supply lines the summer prior.  Alexander had adopted a brilliant strategy; the Russians adopted a scorched-earth tactical retreat.  They torched their own peasants' farms in their retreat.  The Battle of Borodino was the only major engagement of the invasion.  The French advanced with shocking speed through Russian territory.  Of course, that was the point.  When Napoleon came to quarter in the smoldering ruins of Moscow, his support lines were running through hundreds of miles of hostile territory.  His reach had exceeded his grasp.  There were too many hills to hold between Germany and western Russia.  Moscow would be remembered the high-water mark of the First French Empire.  To call the withdrawal of the Grande Armée back to Paris "inglorious" would be an understatement.  Henceforth Napoleon would not be expanding his empire but managing his decline, whether or not he knew it.  Between antagonizing the British, the Prussians, and the Russians, France had unfurled too many war flags on too much soil.  To this day the emperor's name is a byword for megalomania.

Dad always used to tell me that you have to choose your battles.  He always had a penchant for military metaphors and history, despite never serving himself.  He also saw that I was often stirred by mighty passions on the basis of my opinions.  When others--even adults--weren't swayed by my arguments or reached my conclusions, I resented them and anger would simmer in my heart.  He recognized that I was often carried away by half-truth and spiritedness more than by pure reason, so instead of addressing my poor logic at the height of my agitation he offered advice.  He would say, "Son, maybe you're right, but you have to choose your battles."

"But Dad...!" I would blurt indignantly.

"You have to decide if it's a hill worth dying on."

To an adolescent abrim with youthful fire, these sounded like the flaccid excuses of a feeble old man.  (Though he wasn't yet forty when he said this, I figured anyone who'd spout platitudes like that must be half-senile and more than half dead.)  But of course he was right.  I will spare you any trite reflections on the ignorance of youth or the wisdom of fathers.  It is enough to say that he was right.

In my time at the Baptist Geneva, I have found the culture to be at once warm and alienating.  Sometimes this warmth is genuine Christian charity beckoning the lost to repent, sometimes it is a subversive veneer for earning converts.  The nuances of this distinction can be hard to discern and I won't address them here except to say that loving the lost well that they may know Jesus is virtuous and obedient.  There is a darkness in conditional, agenda-driven love, however, if the goal is to win more adherents to your party or cause.

But the real alienation doesn't come from true and false civility; it comes from entrenched conviction.  The air of the place is thick with pathos, both on-campus and in the church bodies within the orbit of the school.  And should it not be so?  After all, we are talking about a concentration of aspiring preachers who have heeded a Divine call to proclaim (literally, "to cry forth" ) the Truth of judgment and salvation.  Such men ought not to waiver in their heed to the declaration of the Cosmic King.  Judgment shall come, salvation is available, but only for a time.  I don't object in the slightest; may the Word of the Lord fill every corner of the earth.  It becomes a problem when the sermon never ends.

Christians disagree charitably about things.  None dispute the authority of the Bible and the Apostle's Creed.  All dispute everything else (even the Catholics, as monolithic as they pretend to be).  There are instances in the Scriptures were people are clearly placed outside the faith and some where people are free to disagree.  Dr. Albert Mohler of Southern Serminary has argued for a  "theological triage" in which there are "three different levels of theological urgency, each corresponding to a set of issues and theological priorities found in current doctrinal debates."  First-order issues are those essential to Christianity, second-order issues involve organizing ourselves into denominational and church bodies, third-order issues as ones of personal preference that can arise between individuals.  First- and third-order issues are pretty obvious to most; Jesus's literal bodily resurrection is pretty clearly a first-order issue, the color of the carpet in the sanctuary a third.

On second-order issues, however, Mohler says that these "resist easy settlement by those who would prefer an either/or approach."  A hasty decision on these issues can rend the soul in knots as it can divide brother from brother.  Nevertheless, Mohler believes that heated discussions can exist on this level.

But should they?  Must they?

For example: Was Paul talking his pre- or post-conversion life in Romans 7?  Should communion be closed to un-immersed believers?  Is the penal substitutionary model of the atonement the only model?  The best?  Are those who deny it nonbelievers?  Are those who deny a forensic view of justification outside the faith, woefully misguided, or simply favoring another perspective?  Premil, postmil, amil, or premil dispensational?  How important is a "born again" experience?  Do some people become Christians by process rather than dramatic conversion?  Can Reformed epistemology or presuppositional apologists have any ground for conversing with the lost world?  How depraved is the intellect in Romans 1?  These are all important issues that get discussed at seminaries the world over and especially at my mine.  I don't deny their significance.  I must deny the obviousness of any one conclusion on these complex issues over others.  Maybe just because a debate is settled for you doesn't mean that the debate is settled for the catholic Church.

Taking a stand is one thing.  What I have grown to revile is how uncharitable many of my peers are on these second-tier issues.  They speak with the prejudice of scientists.  "The facts are plain for any who would see.  Those who don't either fail to understand or deny it to indulge their power and selfishness."  Is this not the great straw man Reformed theology builds?  (I speak here as the cranky insider or the gadfly.)  Is their no room in our doctrine of the perspicuity (for laymen: "clarity" or "obviousness") of Scripture to say that it's not all equally clear?

Perhaps the more serious failure is the Reformed anxiety toward mystery and paradox.  Holding two things in tension is easy for the poet, the artist, the child.  It is nigh-impossible for the empiricist, the activist, the adult.  Physicists have come to agree that light exists as a wave and as a particle.  Do you think experimental physicists will ever live comfortably in that tension?  Yet even they seem to know that light primarily as wave or primarily as particle is no basis for partisanship.

And ultimately isn't this the luxury of men whose world extends scarcely beyond the walls of a seminary library in seminary-churches in a seminary city?  Perhaps the arrows we fire marked "Natural Theology" or "Regulative Principle" fly so true because no enemy bashes at the gates with the troubles of real people in real trouble.  Warlike men may mistake a friend for a foe if their blood lust cannot be directed again a true Enemy.  Woe to the men who choose too many hills to die on.  They may find Moscow aflame and the walk home cold indeed.

To Grow in Wisdom: Jesus as a Model of Liberal Arts (Part 2)

            Perhaps he could, some may argue.  “Of course he knew how to refute them; he was God and God knows everything.  Jesus didn’t need to learn the Bible because he wrote it!”  Yet this ignores what Luke told us earlier in his gospel.  “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).  This means that the four-year-old Jesus did not have a supernatural knowledge of reality.  He was not discoursing in Christian metaphysics while his kindergarten playmates ate mud pies.  He had to learn things just as we all must.  He knew the Bible not because he had a supernatural, divine memory of it but because he applied himself to it.  He learned it.  The Book of Hebrews tells us that he lived just as we did and felt the full human experience.  He cannot be held to be fully human if he didn’t live the human experience—including long days of note-taking and memorization.

            However, Jesus not only demonstrates intellectual knowledge but also earthy, tangible service, though always to serve the greater purpose of his ministry.  His sermons were not designed for academic audiences but popular ones.  His audiences were primarily farmers and fishermen.  His parables frequently use blue-collar metaphors familiar to them.  One of the most explicit stories of Jesus’s concern for the practical comes in his healing of the paralytic.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that a crippled man is brought to Jesus.  He is lowered through the roof of the house in which Jesus is teaching.  When the man is lowered to him, he announces that the man’s sins are forgiven.  The Pharisees balk, murmuring to themselves that this is blasphemy.  Jesus knows their hearts and announces that he will prove his authority to forgive sin by healing the man.  We see in this that Jesus’s tangible ministry is spurred by a spiritual imperative.  Time would fail me to explore other examples like the feeding of the multitudes, his social discourse in the Sermon on the Mount, his affirmation of paying taxes to Caesar, even raising the dead.  Nevertheless, it is clear that Jesus believes that a bodily life must be grounded in a spiritual foundation.

            Most striking for our purposes, however, is how Jesus is passionately concerned with the hearts of his hearers over the particularities of how they make a living.  We read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that a rich young ruler came to Jesus and asked how he may inherit eternal life.  He appeared to have all the correct practices, was obviously wealthy, had a promising political career ahead, and showed a real desire to follow Jesus.  To use Berry College language, his “head” and his “hands” appeared to be in order.  Then Jesus, loving him, drops a dramatic challenge upon the young man.  “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  Rather than follow, this pious, intelligent, practical young man goes away sad.  In saying this, Jesus was not saying that all who follow him must be poor and destitute.  We see numerous people in the Bible who are wealthy Christians.  Yet Jesus knows something about this man; Mammon is his god and he will never be truly fulfilled until he casts his idol into the dust.  He must drop everything and follow this itinerant preacher for as long as he has left on Earth.  This man must leave his doubtlessly promising political career, all the financial gain he has achieved through his job, and follow the Master, an unwise career move in any century.  In saying this, Jesus illustrates what he taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.”  For Jesus, the heart of what we do cannot be devoted to profit.  It must be devoted to God.

            The greatest challenge to the mechanical/employability view of education is the very core of Jesus’s life and teaching.  Bill Gates told the National Governors Association in February 2011 that “everybody should have a sense of which of the colleges—both community and four-year institutions—are doing very well.  You can even break that down by the departments. […] The amount of subsidation is not that well-correlated to the areas that actually create jobs in the state—that create income in the state.”  And surely this is common sense, right?  Pour taxpayer resources into departments which create jobs, take the humanities off of life support, and you will maximize state investment in education.  Let the English majors be baristas and let the hard sciences do the real work in the economy.  Isn’t that what China and Japan do?  But the very premise of the Gospel Jesus preaches, the very premise of the entire Bible, is that truth must be revealed from the outside.  It is not enough that students graduate, make money, create jobs, and figure out who they are on their own.  The Bible says that truth must be revealed from without, not from within.  Jesus tells us that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.  He tells us that the Scriptures have been fulfilled within our hearing.  He tells us that we are in far more trouble than we ever realized in the Sermon on the Mount.  Most importantly of all, he tells us that greater love than we can possibly imagine has come in the body of the modest carpenter calling us home.

            This is why Christianity cannot affirm a libertarian view of education.  Education cannot consist solely in acquiring skills for a marketplace.  Christians throughout the centuries have followed Christ in affirming that education must be holistic.  We cannot be only concerned with right belief, lest we become like the teachers of the law who believed many of the right things yet were “whitewashed tombs”, clean on the outside yet full of death.  Nor may we be concerned only with the pragmatics and measurable outcomes (or incomes) of education lest we become like the rich young ruler who was successful and affluent, yet in the end worshiped money and comfort.  Christian education must be fully embodied, recognizing that Jesus Christ, the Truth, is concerned with the whole person.  Jesus’s final charge to the newly-formed Church is to “Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, even until the end of the age.”  Disciples cannot make themselves no matter how much money or job fulfillment they find.  They must be taught, head, heart, and hands.

To Grow in Wisdom: Jesus as a Model of Liberal Arts (Part 1)

When it comes to educational philosophy, the liberal arts are falling out of vogue.  Organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Casey Research Institute issue dire warnings about the future if America does not devote more resources to mathematics and engineering.  Alex Daley with the Casey Institute even went so far as to write a piece entitled, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Major in the Liberal Arts”, an unsubtle title to say the least.  There he argued that American students are “graduating less prepared for the technological future than their peers from around the world – a trend that is already having serious economic effects as jobs like biotech research now head overseas as quickly as manufacturing once did.”  No doubt Mr. Daley has in mind countries like Japan, Germany, or China, nations which excel in engineering and research.  Or perhaps he has in mind numerous media reports about fledgling American science and math scores or the dire predictions of our economic future if we don’t shed our obsession with the arts.  As any reasonable libertarian like Doug Casey, founder of the Casey Research Institute, will tell you, history, literature, dead languages, and theology are really nothing but diversion or a hobby at best.  Maybe as well the ironically unscientific anecdote of freeloading Occupy protesters with loads of debt and useless Medieval Literature degrees still rings true in the ears of many hearers.  So off to war march the pragmatists and the artists, engineers citing the indisputability of common sense.

            As a Christian, however, I am left wondering how Jesus informs this discussion.  While I no longer sport a knit bracelet advertising it, I still have to ask “What Would Jesus Do?”  (My Sunday School teacher said so.)  More aptly in this discussion, what can we learn from Jesus’s pedagogy here in 2013?  What can we glean from the famous teacher Jesus Christ, the most influential man who ever lived?  I believe that we can see from Jesus a holistic view of education, one which engages the mind with the arts, values the practical life of work and career, and transforms the human heart.  Thus, Jesus the liberal artist sees and educates the whole person.

Jesus demonstrates a holistic liberal education in his knowledge not of only of the Scriptures (a decidedly unscientific book, despite our loudest fundamentalists’ yelling).  In Luke 4:16-22, Jesus attends the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth.  In this passage, we read that Jesus opens the scroll of Isaiah and announces the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in the presence of the assembly—namely, that the Messiah had come and was now standing before them.  We may note two very significant facts here which may not be apparent to the reader.  The first is that Jesus is familiar with the Hebrew Bible.  This story takes place in a time before the conventional chapter and verse designations with which we are familiar.  This was also in a time before the codex, meaning that the entire text of Isaiah was on a single scroll.  Jesus would have studied the synagogue’s copy of the book; it was too expensive to produce individual copies.  Further, Jesus was familiar with Hebrew, a language which was essentially dead at the time.  Modern Hebrew spoken in Israel today is the only example in history of a revived language.  Jesus probably spoke Aramaic as his native language; spoken Hebrew was almost dead by this time.  In fact, most young Jews would not have begun any kind of practical job training before learning Hebrew from the local rabbi.  Jesus was well-versed enough in the Hebrew faith that he was even able to astound the rabbis in Jerusalem… at the age of twelve!

            However, beyond simply knowing the Bible, Jesus the blue-collar carpenter was also familiar with the theological ideas in vogue at the time.  In Luke 20, we read an account of Jesus’s time in Jerusalem during Holy Week.  The Sadducees approach Jesus and pose a hypothetical example concerning the resurrection of the dead.  “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”  The Bible tells us that the Sadducees denied resurrection and they also held only the Torah—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—as canonical Scripture.  The most explicit references to the resurrection of the dead in the Old Testament come in the writings of the Prophets (such as Isaiah and Ezekiel), books denied by the Sadducees.

            Jesus is familiar with their theological opinions and meets them on their own terms.  He answers their question by refuting their silly example (there is no marriage in the resurrection) and then citing Exodus.  He says that God is the god of the living, not the dead.  How can he be (present tense) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob if they are dead?  While modern-day Jews may dispute Jesus’s interpretation of this verse, we are told by Luke that this completely dumbfounded the Sadducees.  Jesus the carpenter quoted passages his opponents considered authoritative, something he could not have done if he hadn’t studied their theology.

Our Ancient Happy Family

The most striking thing to me in my first serious read-through of Aristotle's Politics comes at the very beginning where Aristotle claims the origin of civil government is the family.  For Aristotle, families are comprised of the rulers and the ruled (just as each individual has within himself an element of ruling and being ruled or sovereignty and submission).  Husbands rule the household and wives obey them (here there may be a fair amount of misogyny in his description of women and wives).  Children are subject to the parents, especially the father.  Slaves are subject to the household manager (whichever parent happens to be holding that role).  He then notes how recognizable governments came to be.  Families grew in the number of children and those children grew into adults and started families of their own.  These families stayed within a fairly close distance, forming a village.  As space came to a premium, villages continued to grow in size until they became a collection of villages--towns and then cities.  Cities achieved what Aristotle considered full political statehood: the polis.  When cities connect themselves together under greater rulers, they became full-fledged nations.  Everything Aristotle writes in books 2-9 of Politics is based on that foundation.  The family is a microcosm of the state, whether we are considering villages, local communities, city-states, or grand empires.

The Old Testament/Hebrew Bible offers a similar account.  As we are reminded at weddings, God's first institution is not the church or the state or the charity or the bridge club but the marriage.  Adam and Eve constitute a divinely-ordained covenant.  Dysfunction going forward in the biblical narrative is often traced back to "sins of the father".  Jacob, Isaac and Rebekkah, Abraham, Noah, and most ultimately Adam are directly or indirectly responsible for contention in the narrative of Genesis (and arguably the rest of the biblical narrative).  So the problems between men both personally and in society are in some fashion a fault of the father.  Aaron's failure to properly train his sons Nadab and Abihu as priests lead to their deaths in one of the few narrative sections of Leviticus.  Another very dramatic example is the story of David.  In the wake of his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah, God curses him with strife in his family.  And while much ink has been spilled on the lust of David, much less has followed his shocking passivity as Amnon and Absalom commit atrocious sins.  This culminates in an Israelite civil war as Absalom cultivates latent resentment against the king into a war of usurpation.  David's famous lament for his son in 2 Samuel 18 is the culmination of his failures as a general and king, but at least as importantly his failures as a husband and father:

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

The New Testament carries this theme forward.  One of the most scandalous things Jesus does in the Gospels is refer to Yahweh as "Father" and himself as the Son of God.  In some ways this can be seen as a political statement as well as a statement of love, since in Genesis the notion of sovereignty begins with Yahweh's sovereignty over the creation he spoke into being from nothing.  Jesus is often called "lord" or "master" in the Gospels, translated in English Bibles from the Greek κύριος.  In Greek, this word can be used as a polite term for a teacher or social superior.  However, it is also the word used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) for the Hebrew יהוה ("Yahweh", usually rendered in English Bibles as "the LORD").  As Christian writers continue forward, they describe Jesus as "Lord" and attribute to him both the traditional Greek political connotations and the Hebrew divine sense of the term.  Jesus is also identified as the "Christ" or "Messiah", Greek and Hebrew words meaning "anointed one" and used exclusively in reference to reigning kings (thus David and Solomon are rightly understood as lesser "messiahs").  The reign of Jesus as "king of kings" is a political image... and a familial one.

The Apostles are no exception to entwining the family and the community.  Paul instructs families in 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians.  Paul also considers government officials as executors of God's will and ruling with divinely-delegated authority in Romans 13.  Peter gives similar instructions in 1 Peter as a part of his general instructions to submit to all authority.  The author of Hebrews compares a Christian's relationship to God as one of a father disciplining his children (just as Jesus does in the Gospels).  The authors of the epistles (particularly John) do not favor the term "Christian" for one another; they (gender-inclusively) use "brothers" or "brethren".  This is a clear and over-ridding use of family language for the much larger institution that is the Church.  In light of this evidence, Jews and Christians alike ought to see something quite familiar and even agreeable in Aristotle's depiction of politics.

In contrast, some of the American Founders, particularly those taking their cues from John Locke like as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, see the state as a necessary evil above all else.  After all, Locke's account for political origins in his Second Treatise seems a bit less cuddly.  Rational, free individuals lived in a state of nature perfect harmony and respect.  Everyone only ever used what they could enjoy.  Resources were limited enough that a free individual's reach could rarely exceed their grasp.  It was only with the introduction of money that things started to get chaotic, developing into a state of war where strife for scarce resources threatened the life, liberty, and property of all.  So the most intelligent and hardworking individuals arranged a contractual system by which all people would surrender some of their individual sovereignty to an authority figure.  They must obey this figure so long as he asked reasonably of them and defended their life, liberty, and property.  So really, government is something we had to invent because "if men were angels, no government would be necessary."  We are not governed nor governors by nature, only by necessity.

Modern attitudes towards politics tend to be informed by this mentality whether or not anyone is cognizant of Locke's myth.  Most Americans are fairly negative in their appraisal of the political process and politicians, more so with each passing year.  We "just know" that every politician is corrupt even if we have zero evidence to substantiate that belief.  Government solutions are either inadequate or too modest in scope.  We don't trust our representatives to tell us the truth.  And while we recognize the necessity of making some individuals unequal in their authority, we also refuse to surrender to their assurances that they know what's best for us.  No one knows what's best for us better than we free individuals!

I am by no means suggesting that politicians need less accountability or that we need more government programs.  I am instead saying that maybe our outright negativity toward politics and government is wrong and destructive, especially if we view our fellow citizens and countrymen as brothers and sisters in a temporary and ever-uncertain life.  Maybe we could learn to appreciate the political process and return to a civic virtue that takes our role as citizens seriously.  Libertarians (who buy Locke almost wholesale) would have us believe that the best bulwark against tyranny is less government.  But I rather agree with Aristotle who said, in light of our family-city, "Man is a political animal."  Politics isn't a nasty thing like excreting or bathing that we do because we have to.  Man is the only animal to arrange himself in a group, to rule and be ruled.  Maybe politics is part of what makes us human.

In fourth-grade I was given a citizenship award by my teacher.  I had no idea what this meant then.  Reflecting back, it's sad that I didn't.  Aristotle's point about genuine concern for our fellowmen--both body and soul--through political action is the very basis of any free republic.  Ignore the economist, the pundit, the cynic who would have you believe that some abstract state always expands into tyranny.  The liberals are right to note that the state only expands where free citizens fail.  Now I understand and am honored by that flimsy piece of paper I lost a long time ago.  The best bulwark against tyranny isn't less government, it's better citizens.  Citizens who care about other citizens, citizens who use what they have to help out others whether through tax dollars or moral oversight or bodies in the army or even out of their own pockets, citizens who are truly "other-centric" are the worst enemy of any potential tyrant.

Because I Didn't Do Anything To Earn It: Why I Am Reformed Part 4

You never want to be the kid picked last for dodgeball.

Dodgeball is even less-forgiving than its schoolyard cousin, kickball.  At least in kickball, there are slow kids stuck in the outfield.  But poor, poor fat kids have no hope in dodgeball.  They're big targets, slow dodgers, and typically warm the bench.  Their only hope of salvation comes in what my elementary gym teacher called "execution-style" dodgeball.  In that version, you could bring a player back from the being out if you caught a ball thrown at you before it hit the ground (it also rendered the thrower out, outing the other team a player while your team gained one).  Best of all was the redemption you could gain if you threw the ball into the basketball hoop on the other side of the court (indoor only).  Then your whole team was resurrected!

I had my work cut out for me.  I was a slow, "husky", and uncoordinated kid (I say winsomely as a slow, chubby, and only sorta coordinated adult).  My skills were honed in a gauntlet; changing schools and churches meant establishing a new reputation.  Otherwise, I'd be picked last every time.  It meant a lot of trips to the sidelines, a lot of caution, a lot of observation, and a lot of jammed fingers when the ball wasn't squarely at my chest.  It meant enduring the shame of the last pick time and again.  But performance is what counts in sports.  Finally, I proved my worth in fifth grade when I executed a power-slide/ankle-shot combo that not only avoided a blue foam ball aimed at my head but also rendered Kiley Sutton out.  (I doubt very much that she remembers it over a decade later, but for me it was the moment when I became one with the execution dodgeball spirits.)

So imagine the scandal of a choice without any merit at all.  Something totally unearned, something beyond all attainment; a choosing in spite of rather than for what the chosen deserves.

When a dodgeball captain chooses a terrible player, he may do so for two reasons.  First, he may just be pitying the player.  He may do so out of guilt; he chooses his little cousin for the team because Mom insisted that he include the awful tyke.  He may also do so out of goodwill compassion.  Maybe he genuinely wants to include the wimpy kid and his heart is stirred to the angelic goal of inclusion at the expense of team performance.  Second, he may choose the fat kid to make his victory all the more impressive.  He knows that if he can win even with such a severe handicap, his team looks that much better.  Some blend of these two motives probably explained why that red-headed fifth-grader picked me in a church game back when I was six or seven.  I remember he told me to stick close, then he deflected shots intended for me with the ball he held.  My throws barely reached half the distance to my target.  Still, by including me and sticking up for me, he was my hero for the night.  And we did win when it was down to just the two of us based solely on his skill, not mine.

This is unconditional election, the "U" of the Calvinist TULIP.  It's basically a way of explaining how anyone so stuck in total depravity can be saved from what they justly deserve.  After all, there's no reason why you would ever pick the wimpy fat kid in dodgeball based on his skill.  If that sounds harsh, it's because you haven't played enough dodgeball.  You don't pick that kid because of what he can do, not if you want to win.  Yet God does exactly that!  For the same reason that a mighty fifth-grader would choose a merit-less first-grader, Paul says that God chooses to save the chief of sinners.  Just as it brought glory to the fifth-grader to choose the weak one, so too God chooses the weak to humble the strong and wise.  So the story of my first-grade dodgeball game is not the story of how I saved the day, but how the older boy saved the day.  The story of a Christian's salvation is not the story of the great things he has done, but the story of the great things God as done.  So, Paul says, Jesus saves people so that everyone will know the glory of God--his love, his power, his grace--and will boast in His saving work, not in their own.

I can already hear a few loud objections at this point (yes, even through the series of tubes that is the internet).  First, isn't it vainglorious to want to make a big deal of yourself?  Isn't God being a huge show-off?  Why does He need glory and glorification anyway?  Isn't He complete in Himself?  Well, consider this: Idolatry can be defined in the Bible as putting anything in the supreme place rightfully occupied by Yahweh.  So if you put anything above the Lord, be it your money, yourself, your partner, or Dionysus, you're an idolater.  There's a good chance that our fifth-grader in the second story was wanting to make a big deal of himself to show how great at dodgeball he was.  If that's the case (it's been so long, who can know?), it would be awfully vainglorious.  But consider this: is it vain for God to make much of Himself?  If He held anything above Himself, wouldn't that be idolatry?  If He is really as majestic and satisfying as He makes Himself out to be, would it be right to put anyone or anything above Himself?  Not even we can be a bigger deal than God.  He can't think of any one of us or even all our doomed race above or even equal with himself.  Then we'd be bigger gods than He is.  And you thought you had ego problems before...


Second (and related), couldn't He just have done so out of love?  Maybe He was moved by compassion, not by glory.  Think back to the motives of our team captain.  Noble compassion can move the captain too.  That's very true.  But does that preclude glory?  Think as if you were really God (shouldn't be too hard, we all do so pretty often).  Imagine you were the most satisfying, beautiful, enthralling, intelligent, benevolent being in the universe... wisdom embodied even!  You know that finite creatures spin their wheels trying to satisfy themselves apart from you.  You're all they need; you know it, but they don't.  Wouldn't it be the most loving thing in the world to reveal yourself to them?  I remember planning to pay a visit to a girl I was (sorta) courting.  She called me to say that she was having an awful weekend.  Her heart was burdened with her dad's recent health scare.  She said she was wiped out from crying and felt like she looked awful.  Maybe this wasn't the smartest move, but I begged to see her anyway.  To me, it didn't matter if she looked like a million bucks or half-drowned.  I just wanted to spend time with her!  To her credit, she did the selfless thing and deigned to see me anyway.  We had a wonderful date after all and I was blessed to have seen her.  Her care for me led her to do something that some might read as selfish and condescending, but was really a sacrifice for her.  It was the sacrifice of her very presence when she didn't feel up to it.  That's not to say this is a perfect image of God's love and glory; this gal, divine as she is, isn't God.  Still, she let me enjoy her company and make much of her.  And I was thrilled to do so!  Even though things didn't ultimately work out, we both had a great time together.


Third, couldn't God choose us based on respecting our choice?  Back to dodgeball, wouldn't it be cruel for a captain to choose a kid who didn't want to play?  Wouldn't that be bullying?  We'll address this a bit more when we delve a little further into the TULIP, but I will briefly note something here.  One could consider the willingness to play as a merit in a player.  After all, the fact that some wimpy fat kid showed up at all indicates that he has some drive to do well.  A shrewd captain will recognize this; coaches and teachers will tell you that determination counts for far more than raw talent in the long run.  So in a lot of ways this is a weakness of the human analogy I've chosen.  For this to really fit, we would have to assume a terrible player who had absolutely no inclination to play.  Thomas Aquinas said that all our language for God was analogical; our imperfect and finite human words can't contain a perfect and infinite God.  But notice something important we've already seen: the willingness to play is a merit.  So, to make the analogy work, the choice to be saved is a merit!  If you desire good things--things of God that have eternal significance--then you have something worthwhile in yourself apart from grace and faith.  You merit some justification because you at least wanted to be good.  But the Bible says that we were dead in our transgressions and that apart from faith--which is itself a gift from God--it is impossible to please God.  We weren't chosen for salvation because we did any good...we didn't even desire good apart from God!


Keep in mind what I said last time I talked about this.  I don't want to start a fight.  I don't want to be mean and nasty.  I know I haven't addressed the finer points of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Wesleyan, or Semi-Pelagian theological interpretations of election and reprobation in biblical soteriology.  If you even know what those words mean, you probably aren't my audience anyway.  And yes, it's incomplete.  This series isn't finished yet though (in spite of a lengthy hiatus), and no words I or anyone can use will ever fully capture an infinite and mysterious God.  Gotta try though, even if I haven't a shred of dodgeball merit.

Should Christians Vote? (Part 2)

Others, such as Cal Thomas[1] and John MacArthur[2], argue that Christians ought not to worry about politics and instead focus on evangelism.  Thomas states this position well:

No matter how hard they try to protect the gospel from corruption, ministers who focus on politics and politicians as a means of redemption must minimize their ultimate calling and message.  The road to redemption does not run through Washington, D.C.  Politicians can’t redeem themselves from the temptations of Washington.  What makes anyone think they can redeem the rest of us?[3]

Whether the law [concerning government restrictions on political statements from the pulpit] is repealed, or not, churches and ministers would do better to keep their attention focused on the things above, rather than the things below, because politics can be the ultimate temptation and pollute a far superior and life-changing message.[4]

For adherents to this position, while there is no active prohibition on Christians voting or participating in politics, the real focus of Christians should be on evangelism and gospel-preaching.  Ministers are not first and foremost political theorists, and Christians should not be first and foremost political advocates but preachers and servants of transformative gospel.  The world will not be changed by political rallies, they argue, but by the spread of Christianity to all the earth.


Grudem contends that this position is too disparaging of Christian political involvement because it demonstrates too narrow a view of the gospel and of Biblical teaching.  He argues that the gospel is not limited to salvation but is rather “God’s good news about all of life!”[5]  Since the whole Bible is part of God’s good news, it follows that the entire Bible must be considered as part of what Jesus charged the church to go forth and teach.  Thus, we must consider Christian political activism to be worthwhile “if it is part of what God teaches us in Scripture, then of course it does spiritual good, because it is something that pleases God.”[6]  Grudem also says that this “do evangelism, not politics” view is wrong because the gospel includes life transformation as a fundamental aspect of it.  If the gospel changes individual lives, it ought to change them throughout and entirely, including their social and political lives.  It is not as though God only cares about spiritual things, Grudem writes, but also their physical lives.  Christians ought to let the gospel inform their voting just at is it informs the way they do business, maintain friendships, and serve in their communities.

Scripture has powerful words on the subject of stewardship.  Perhaps the most relevant are 1 Peter 4:10-11 which read, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”  These verses tell us that God has given us all gifts—and not just in the context of money as stewardship is usually discussed—for edifying each other and glorifying God.  Peter says that those who speak should talk like God.  Those who serve should serve through God’s power and in God’s name.  All that man has God has given him and he should use it all to glorify God.  As people who live in a historically-unique situation, one in which the average person has at least some level of political choice and voice, shouldn’t Christians use the political gift they have been given to glorify God?  Can Christians who abstain from voting really be said to have “made the most of every opportunity because the days are evil”?[7]  Instead, those who take a hard-separation view seem to believe that Christians ought to abstain from some opportunities because the days are evil.  This kind of attitude reminds one of the ostrich that sticks its head in the ground, keeping its conscience unsullied while the world may be crumbling around it.  Christians should vote, keeping in mind the God they must account unto for their vote, while they still have a chance.  Universal suffrage is, as aforementioned, a historical anomaly which may not last forever.
***


The paper ended here but let me supplement some additional thoughts.


I do not intend to advocate for some sort of kingdom of Heaven here on earth.  In fact, the early Evangelicals of the 1950s and 1960s were very much against political involvement.  In their day the mainline denominations had wed themselves fully to the social gospel and progressivism.  Thus, men like Martin Lloyd-Jones or Karl Barth denounced political advocacy and political philosophy as aberrant distractions from preaching and teaching the Bible (though granted Barth had Nazism AND liberalism in mind).  It wasn't until Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 that Evangelicalism began its passionate love affair with the Republican Party.  Jimmy Carter still hasn't recovered from that bitter divorce, given that he announces his departure the Southern Baptist Convention every year.


Now we young Evangelicals can blog our hearts out about how cranky we are at our parents for engaging in culture wars that left us and all our gay friends jaded and disillusioned.  There's actually quite a lot to be said for this sentiment.  At some point the Reagan-Falwell wedding spawned a generation of dysfunction, some being the Ron-Paul-leaning Neo-Reformed, some obedient and stalwart Republicans, some compassionate-if-naive moderates, and more than a couple rebellious, "look-how-NOT-my-conservative-parents-I-am!" political liberals.  And of these simplistic yet all-too-common archetypes, all would seize upon the label "Evangelical", even if not always the heritage.  All these reactions are understandable, particularly as Christians became a bit too wed to the Republican platforms of the '90s and '00s.  I remember hearing more about welfare and terrorism in church than I did about predestination.  Regeneration and a solid doctrine of the Kingdom (both Here and Not-Here-Yet) were things I missed until college!  That's a damning thing to realize; all three of those have more biblical basis than civic marriage policy or national defense.  No really.


It would be easy at this point to conclude that we Christians should leave our religion out of voting.  After all, we don't want other people forcing their religion on us (like sharia law, a legal code universally bad if you believe in individual rights).  And yet I, being a reckless and self-important bloggerist, have chosen to navigate a rockier, nuance, and I believe ultimately truer course.

If we Christians truly believe what we say we do, namely that the Bible offers a true account of the universal human condition, then we cannot pretend it doesn't exist in civic life.  Our politics must be informed by the narrative we espouse.  It's for this reason that I openly reject John Locke and Thomas Jefferson's assertion that politics is a necessary evil.  I reject wholesale the notion that government is a contractual agreement between citizens.  I reject that a law is just simply because the parties under contractual obligation have assented to the terms of the agreement.  Instead, I affirm that our laws must match a natural standard, something which exists beyond all legislation and predates it.  All our laws are a reflection of this Natural Law, an unwritten, decidedly unscientific account of our souls.  The fulfillment of Natural Law is human flourishing, namely when man begins to live corporately in such a way that he finds his deepest longings and desires satisfied according to his individual and communal nature.  Is the Bible right when it teaches Imago Dei and the Fall?  Is that true even for people who don't believe it?  And--most importantly--can we construct our laws in such a way to counter or even roll back the Fall?  If the gospel of Jesus Christ brings life to all things it touches, why do we regard secular law as the exception?

Or I'll put it plainly: to leave religion out of our voting is to make relative the truest account of our mortal condition.  This is not to say that we should institute Levitical law or ban gay marriage.  It is to say that we oughtn't check our faith at the door just because we don't want to be perceived as fighting the culture war.  I agree with Aristotle that the end goal of all legislation is justice.  Further, the end goal of earthly justice is human flourishing, not fairness or equality (as though all men were the same in faculty or virtue).  So the question on a given issue--like gay marriage, to chose a timely example--is not "Is this fair to homosexuals as compared with heterosexuals?" but rather is "Which leads to greater human fulfillment?  What is best for men individually and corporately (aka 'the state')?  What best fits the purposes of man and the longings of his soul?"  The answer to the flourishing question may be the same as to the equality question, or it may be entirely different.  Such is the nature of particular justice.

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[1] Cal Thomas, “Pulpit Bullies,” Tribute Media Services (October 2, 2008). www.calthomas.com/index/php?news-2381. Accessed May 7, 2012.

[2] John MacArthur, Why Government Can’t Save You: An Alternative to Political Activism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000).

[3] Thomas, “Pulpit Bullies”.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Grudem, Politics According to the Bible, 45, (italics original).

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ephesians 5:16.

Should Christians Vote? (Part 1)

The church and the state have had a convoluted relationship throughout Christian history.  Jesus himself was killed by the authority of a secular political governor.  This same Roman Empire which crucified him as a disruptive threat would eventually give his church official sanction.  In the medieval period, the head of this Roman church would intervene in political affairs both between nations and within their borders.  Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin entwined their reform movements with their local governments.  The Anabaptists took a radically different tack, preaching hard pacifism and eschewing any political involvement.  Even “Christian” governments persecuted other religions and denominations throughout this time, from the Jews in medieval Europe to the Baptists in colonial Massachusetts.  In the twenty-first century, many Christians live in liberal democracies which have universal suffrage.  They have the option to vote for Christian candidates and choose their own leaders from among the regular populace and not the ruling elite.  But is a Christian engaging in political life entwining the church and the state?  Worse still, is Christian political involvement distracting them from the Great Commission to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth?  Not at all; rather, Christians ought to engage in politics with no burden of conscience because they are stewards of the vote and political voice God has given them in modern democracies.

Some believe that Christians should have nothing at all to do with civil government—including voting—because government is evil and demonic.  They argue that Satan is the god of this world and governments are wicked, fallen manifestations of his power.  Therefore, Christians should have nothing to do with them.  Is he not after all the ruler of the powers and principalities of this world?  This is essentially the argument Greg Boyd makes in Myth of a Christian Nation.  There he argues from Luke 4:5-6[1] that Satan is the authority over the dark powers of the world.  In this verse, Satan is tempting Jesus to bow down and worship him.  He entices him by claiming that the kingdoms of the world have been given over to him; if Jesus will worship, Satan will give him authority over the world.  Thus, Boyd concludes that Satan is the ruler of the governments of the world.[2]  Christians should have nothing to do with government because it is fundamentally wicked and destructive.

Wayne Grudem addresses this argument in his book God and Politics.  He writes that the mistake of this proof-text is that Satan is probably lying to Jesus.  First, he notes that Jesus calls Satan “the father of lies”.  Christians are falling into Satan’s deception when they give him more credit than they actually should.  Second, he notes that there are specific verses which say that civil government is a gift from God and is subject to his authority, not Satan’s.  He gives the examples of Daniel 4:17, Romans 13:1-6, and 1 Peter 2:13-14 and notes that they all indicate that God is sovereign over all creation.  Even further, Grudem notes that these verses teach that worldly governments are tools of God to further his ends on earth.[3]


Daniel 4:17 teaches that God is the ultimate source of all political authority and therefore Christians should not be shy about political involvement.  The verse reads, “‘The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’”  In context, the speaker is God in a vision to King Nebuchadnezzar.  Nebuchadnezzar saw a great tree which shaded the animals, provided nests for the birds, and fed all men on the earth.  Then a watchman from heaven orders that the tree be cut down and his mind reduced to madness.  The prophet Daniel interprets this dream to mean that the great Nebuchadnezzar will be brought low and driven to madness for a time by the King of Kings.  Thus, this verse clearly teaches that God is sovereign over all civil government.

Romans 13 is an even more explicit text on the relationship of Christians and political life.  Verses 1 through 5 read, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience.” 


From these verses it may be seen first that God establishes and grants authority to governments.  This means that all governments have their authority ultimately derived from God.  Therefore executive decisions are carried out using power delegated to them by God.  Governments cannot be fundamentally Satanic because they were created by God.  They act to execute his will.  Second, governments rule for the sake of punishing wrong behavior and promoting good behavior.  These verses indicate that it is not wrong for the government to punish its own citizens, even using violent means (“for he does not bear the sword in vain”) to do so.  In fact, since the governor is God’s servant and is avenging God’s wrath, it would be wrong for him not to do so.  Since he is bearing the sword for God and God has given it to him to execute judgment, a pacifist official who would refuse to punish lawbreakers would be a sinner himself!  Third, the government official is God’s servant for the good of the citizens.  Therefore, Christians should have minimal conflict with governors or government officials under normal circumstances.  Both Christians and governors, even if they are wicked governors, are servants of God and have more in common in their duties than distinct.  This concept also informs how Christians should view governing.  Good government exists to serve God and the citizens, not the stated ends of a superior or the self-interest of the governor himself or the interests of a particular faction within in the state.  The good governor must regard the good of all within the political community.


Peter agrees with Paul that government is not Satanic but divine.  1 Peter 2:13-14 reads, “Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.”  At the end of this paragraph Peter notes one thing which Paul already did in Romans—governors are sent by God to punish evil and praise good on his behalf.  The first part of this verse is instructive; Christians must submit to the government for the sake of the Lord.  Here obedience to governmental officials is commended as obedience to God.  If those who equate government with Satanic authority are correct, how can they explain this passage?  How can a Christian be obedient to God while also being obedient to Satan?

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[1] These verses read, “And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.”  This and all subsequent Scripture quotations are taken from The ESV Study Bible, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008).

[2] Greg Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 21-22.

[3] Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 37-38.